Tag Archives: monopsony

“The existence of monopsony power supplies the only theoretically credible condition under which a minimum wage can possibly improve the well-being of low-skilled workers without harming any of them. Of course, however, claims that monopsony power is in reality rampant enough in the United States to justify minimum-wage legislation are incredible. These claims fail the smell test. But — and here’s the point of this post — to the extent that temporal or geographic pockets monopsony power might arise in reality, once source of such power might well be minimum-wage legislation itself.” (12/06/17)

“Many people seem to assume that only monopolies have monopoly power. Not so, most firms do. If your firm can raise prices by one penny without seeing sales drop to zero, then you have monopoly power. And if you can reduce wages by one penny per hour without losing all your employees, then you have monopsony power in the labor market. That’s not to say perfect competition is not a useful model, it’s is a good approximation of reality in some contexts. But it’s becoming increasing clear that monopsony power is more than a minor characteristic of the labor market, it gets to the heart of the current issue of labor shortages.” (06/13/17)

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